Fangs and Blood Drops
by Lady Shadow Walker
Summary: Darcy is still relatively young for a vampire, but she has pride in her control - a control that her sire had been sure to train into her. The problem they never expected happened when Darcy became exposed to superheroes with super blood. She handled it surprisingly well, if she did say so herself. Until Bucky Barnes walked in, bleeding. That was where the obsession started.


**A/N: I love Halloween, vampires, and Bucky Barnes with Darcy Lewis. This is the result.**

Darcy knew what she was doing was weird. She _knew_ , but she was so hooked from the second she'd smelled it. He'd been coming in from a mission and had a cut across his bicep. It was already well on its way to being healed, but there was blood coating his sleeve.

She'd barely restrained herself when he'd walked by the communal couch where she was watching a movie.

See, Darcy was a relatively young vampire, barely over a century old. Her sire had made sure that she had self control before he'd left to travel the world some more. She still kept contact with him, having gotten over any resentment towards him decades before.

The point was that even though her sire had made sure she wouldn't expose vampires to the world or unintentionally kill someone didn't mean that she had the iron-clad control of the elder vampires.

Different bloods tasted different, so each vampire had their preferences. Most tended to favor the rarer blood types, since they were something of a delicacy. Darcy, personally, could tolerate almost all blood, but tended to go for whatever the healthiest smelling option she could get. Healthy blood always gave the best power and allowed her to go longer between feedings.

The problem was that humans weren't alone, and there were other types of bloods that smelled even better than she thought possible.

She had learned that this might be a problem when she first met Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three. She was able to control herself, but she couldn't help but track them with her eyes, listening to their blood pound through their bodies, longing for a taste.

She controlled herself because she was a good friend and also because she wasn't sure she would be able to compel them since they weren't human.

Her curiosity was eventually sated because Thor knew – of course he did – and he allowed her to to have some of his blood. It was definitely better than human blood, but she elected to not drink any of his blood again because he was her best friend's boyfriend and the blood wasn't great enough for the level of weirdness that would incite.

When Jane and she had moved into Avengers Tower, she had met the Avengers and Co. many of whom had odd things going on with their blood. Most of them smelled very good, but she never attempted to feed off of them. In fact, she never even thought about feeding off of him before this mess either.

Something that had always helped with her control was that even though humans could smell amazing (or gross if they didn't take care of themselves), they only truly smelled delicious when they were bleeding and the smell of blood was in the air.

She'd slowly smelled all of the Avengers fresh blood, but it was like resisting junk food – well, if the junk food was dozens of liters of extremely good smelling nutrients that would probably give her an extreme boost in power since blood was the source of everything for vampires.

Regardless, she'd resisted temptation extremely well for someone of her age. That is, until Bucky Barnes murder strutted through the room in full Winter Soldier get up with blood dripping down his arm.

She didn't do anything extremely stupid, especially since Thor was the only Avenger to know her secret, but she automatically tracked him across the room as if in a trance. She had to blink several times after he'd walked out of the room, and then she sniffed the air one, long time. She froze.

Her eyes zeroed in on the lone drop of blood that he'd accidentally let drip to the tile floor of the kitchen.

"Bad Darcy," she muttered to herself. "Don't be weird, don't be weird."

Despite her words to herself, she found herself rising to her feet, almost without her control. She barely managed to keep her speed human as she moved towards the drop of blood.

She carefully listened to make sure no one was close then dipped her fingertip into the blood before she could talk herself out of it. She raised her finger to her mouth.

The second his blood touched her tongue, she moaned, then froze at the sound. She couldn't help it, though. In all the years she'd been a vampire, in all the people she'd fed from (including Thor), she had never, not _once_ tasted anything that came even close to whatever the hell was in Bucky Barnes's blood.

. . .

That was where the obsession started, but certainly not where it ended.

. . .

Darcy was in a bit of trouble, because her instincts flared anytime Bucky Barnes was even in the same room as her. At first, she thought it was just a temporary craving that she would quickly get over, but that illusion shattered when she found herself cooking for the team one night and obsessively watched to see if he liked it.

She felt extremely pleased when he went back for a second portion of steak, collared greens, and beans – all of which had been cooked in cast-iron skillets.

"Are you not gonna eat anything, short stack?" Tony asked her, giving her an assessing look. "You won't keep your figure if you starve yourself."

Darcy rolled her eyes. "I ate before anyone else got here. I'm fine, believe me."

Her eyes tracked Barnes as he went back for thirds. She felt smug, like she should be puffing her chest up. Yes, that was _her_ thrall eating her cooking, allowing her to provide.

When she realized what she'd thought, the idea of what she was doing finally dawning on her, she hurriedly made her excuses to go home.

 _Fuck_ , she thought. She'd been accidentally feeding him the same types of foods that a vampire would feed a blood donor: foods high in iron to keep anemia from setting in from regular feedings.

She especially should have realized what she was doing when she'd spent three hours hunting down ingredients that didn't have any preservatives, chemicals, or other artificial elements that made blood have an odd taste.

She was getting in too deep and needed to take a step back and get over this obsession.

. . .

Her instincts were impossible to ignore, and she accidentally kept feeding him iron-rich foods without realizing until it was too late. It was even worse because he'd started to actually talk to her, and he was remarkably charming for someone who'd gone through what he had. It only made her long for him more, only this time as more than just a blood donor.

Darcy was just thinking about what to cook for the superheroes next – she was leaning towards salmon – when Thor came into the kitchen.

"You seek to make the Sargent Barnes your thrall," Thor observed in a nonjudgmental tone.

Darcy flinched. "No. Yes. I don't know. God, can we call it something different? I hate that word. Let's call it a donor. That's much better. And I shouldn't. I really, really shouldn't, but he tastes so damn good. It's making my feedings seem lackluster in comparison."

Thor seemed surprised. "You have already fed off him? I was unaware that any but I knew your secret."

"No one does," Darcy answered, sinking in on herself.

Thor frowned at her. "Surely you have not tried to compel him? He has already faced many sorrows. I loath to think his reaction should he learn you controlled him."

"What?" Darcy said, horrified. "Of course not! I'm a vampire, not a monster." She shifted her feet slightly, then mumbled, "He accidentally bled on the floor one day."

Thor's eyebrows shot up. "Surely you know you cannot go on like this, Lady Darcy. He has already noticed the amount of attention you give him, and he is already suspicious that he's never seen you eat."

"He is?" Darcy asked, horrified. "Am I going to have to eat dinner one night to keep everyone off my trail?"

Thor looked at her with an empathetic expression. "It is possible, my lightening sister. The others are not far off from drawing their own conclusions."

Darcy shuddered. "I hate eating human food. It always tastes even worse coming back up."

"You are deflecting," Thor noted. "You must make a decision regarding Sargent Barnes, Lady Darcy. Either take him on as a 'blood donor' or shift your attention away before you endanger yourself."

Darcy nodded sorrowfully.

. . .

Darcy only lasted a week of carefully avoiding Bucky Barnes before he cornered her on the elevator.

He shifted, looking oddly nervous. He spoke, "Are you scared of me?"

"What, no!" she immediately said, breathing through her mouth to avoid his smell.

His icy eyes narrowed on her, noting her breathing. "Do I smell bad or something, then? Why have you been avoiding me?"

"Avoiding you?" Darcy repeated, voice slightly too high pitched as she furiously shook her head. "I'm definitely not avoiding you. Why would I do that?" The elevator doors opened again. "Oh look at that. I need to get back to work!"

She fled, feeling his gaze on her back the entire time as she tried to ignore the enticing _lub, dub_ of his heart.

. . .

Darcy should have known that the most prolific assassin of the century wouldn't give up so easily.

He suddenly seemed to appear _everywhere_. It was getting ridiculous. He brought her coffee every morning and would stay until she drank at least half of the gunk. She was sure it was the best damn coffee in New York, but that didn't change the fact that it was human sustenance and made her feel sick.

His scent was always lingering around, driving her crazy and making her hungrier than normal. She would have to feed soon if she wanted to maintain control.

That was how she found herself trying to scope out a good feed late that night. The problem was that there was a reason why many older, more powerful vampires kept blood thralls.

If a human wasn't healthy, their blood tasted disgusting and wasn't very satisfying for vampires. In addition, whatever stuff was floating around in the blood stream – say alcohol or drugs – would get transferred to a vampire and affect them.

That meant that clubs were generally out as hunting grounds, and most people who were very healthy slept at normal hours, which was also counterproductive for a vampire's nocturnal habits.

(And no she didn't burn or sparkle in the sun, fuck you very much.)

Anyway, that was how she found herself scoping out a gym that was fairly popular, waiting on someone who was healthy and alone.

Her prey finally came in the form of an extremely buff guy who must live in the gym with how much muscle mass he had. When she started to walk towards him, putting a bit of sway in her hips, his eyes zeroed in on her chest, and he leered.

Yeah, she'd have no problems draining this guy of a pint or two. Since he was about to talk to her, probably to say something wildly inappropriate, she decided to cut to the chase.

"You want to come with me to that alley over there," she said, voice thick with her compel. "You will stay quiet and allow me to feed."

The man nodded dumbly, a blurred over look on his face as he thoughtlessly followed after her.

He stopped where she led him, and she said, "Give me your arm."

He blankly handed over his arm.

Her fangs were already out, eager for sustenance, and she bit into his arm as gently as she could before she started feeding. She tended to feed from the arm because other places (say neck and inner thigh) were entirely too intimate for people who were essentially her McDonald's for the night.

The gym guy tasted decent enough. She noted he was B+, but he tasted a bit too much like chemicals, probably from whatever the hell he'd been eating to make himself bulk up so much.

Fed but dissatisfied with the taste, she pulled away and licked her bite mark, allowing it to heal over. She turned to him, "You will not remember any of this. You will continue with what you were going to do tonight, and you will take some iron supplements when you get home."

The man nodded and left.

Darcy leaned against the wall of the alley and groaned. She was going to have to get used to normal blood again. This was getting ridiculous.

She had about thirty minutes before her eyes would fade from the crimson red they currently were, so she had some time to kill. She decided to go on a walk in Central Park. Maybe she'd get lucky, and someone who smelled better would come by so she could get a second feed for the night.

Just as she expected, no one could have possibly compared to Barnes.

. . .

Over the next two weeks, she still got coffee on her desk from Barnes, but he was almost nowhere to be seen. She'd asked the resident AI if he was on a mission, but he wasn't. She wasn't sure how to feel about that.

She decided to take it as a sign that she definitely needed to back off. Despite that, she continued to make sure the communal kitchen was stocked with iron rich foods with no artificial components. It was still possibly a step in the right direction.

. . .

Darcy was suspicious as she headed back towards her apartment. She'd had a run-in with Thor in the elevator, and he seemed a bit _too_ jovial as he'd wished her a good night.

She wasn't sure what he was up to, but he was up to something. Hopefully it had something to do with Jane since the astrophysicist hadn't really left the labs in more than two days.

She stiffened as she walked up to her apartment door, though. She'd recognize that smell anywhere. What the hell was Bucky doing in her apartment? Especially after he'd avoided her for the better part of a month for seemingly no good reason.

She unlocked her door and entered, closing the door behind herself as she listened to the steady heartbeat coming from her kitchen. She hesitantly walked in to see all of her empty cabinets opened and her unplugged refrigerator door swung wide, showing that there was nothing inside.

Bucky was sitting at her kitchen table watching her with an unreadable expression on his face.

Darcy put her bag down. "I can explain."

"You're a vampire." It wasn't a question.

Darcy jumped. "What? Of course I'm not. That's crazy. There's no such thing as vampires. Besides, I totally go outside during the day, like, all the time. Plus, blood? Gross, dude. And I ate garlic bread the other day at dinner! Vampires can't do that, now can they?"

Bucky continued to observe her panic with an unreadable expression. "Thor told me."

"Why that no good, secret spilling piece of –" Darcy started angrily, then froze. "Wait, Thor wouldn't rat me out . . . because I'm not a vampire," she hastily added.

"I saw you," Bucky said. "About a month ago, feeding on someone."

She paled but he continued before she could say anything.

"Ya know," he said, "I was going to hightail it outta there. Maybe tell Stark so he could get rid of you. But then I remembered that you'd left the guy alive, and he didn't seem to actually be in pain. I thought over it a while, and I realized that there was no way you'd done that – that hypnotizing thing on any of us, because we would have noticed. And if not us, then Stark's AI."

His eyes narrowed on her. "That's when I realized that you'd started to feed us iron-rich food cooked in cast iron skillets. So then I figured you must be planning an all-you can eat buffet, but that didn't seem quite right either. That's when I went to Thor, since he seemed to know more than he was letting on."

He rose to his feet and moved towards her. At some point the tables had turned, making him the predator instead of her. She stumbled back until he had her backed to the wall, barely an inch of space between their bodies. She breathed through her mouth, trying to edge away from his intoxicating scent as the pounding of his heart echoed through her head.

"Thor told me an interesting story," Bucky told her, face inches away. "About how vampires have an instinct to keep blood thralls. And what d'ya know? You were treating me like one. Trying to keep me well-fed so I wouldn't get weak if you fed from me. Keeping me happy so the endorphins in my blood would make me taste better. Anytime I'd reach for alcohol, you would try to get me to stop, saying it was bad for me."

He leaned even closer, his chest brushing against her, his thigh wedging between her legs. "You know what I think?"

She was holding her breath to avoid his smell. She was already dead, and breathing was just a habit anyway. She shook her head.

He moved so that his lips brushed against her ear when he spoke, "I think that I waited for months, trying to work up the nerve to ask you on a date. I think that I started to fall for you, and then I found out that you were a vampire, and it should have scared me away. But all I've been thinkin' about since I saw you feeding was what it would feel like if you sunk your fangs into me."

He chuckled darkly, seemingly unaware of the way she was barely restraining herself from jumping him then and there. "And then," he continued, "I realized I didn't mind that you're a vampire. In fact," he breathed, leaning into her, allowing her to feel something against her thigh that she certainly hadn't expected. "I think I like the idea a whole lot."

She whimpered, unable to stop the noise.

He leaned back enough so that he could look her in the eyes. His pupils were blown, overtaking the icy blue of his eyes. He barely hesitated before he leaned forward and pressed his lips insistently against hers.

She immediately responded, wrapped herself around him. If he noticed that her fingers automatically rested on the pulse point of his throat or that she still wasn't breathing even as she moaned and clutched him closer, desperately keeping her fangs from sliding out, he didn't mention it. '

Instead, he pulled her closer, deepening the kiss as his hands ran frantically over her.

It could have been a second or an eternity later that he pulled back, gasping for air. She carefully allowed herself one breath in through her nose and nearly keened from the scent of him so close and smelling so good.

He seemed to know exactly what had happened as he smirked at her, face flushed. He carefully gauged her reaction, then said, "Feed from me."

Before she even knew what she was doing, she'd changed their positions, slamming him against the wall. Plaster shook from the ceiling, but he was unharmed and looked turned on more than anything. Thank you, super soldier serum.

"Are you sure?" Darcy asked, feeling like she was going to die (again) if he changed his mind.

He pressed a quick peck to her lips. "I'm sure," he answered, heart pounding away.

Before he could change his mind, she sunk her fangs into his throat. He actually fucking moaned, and she froze for a second, wondering if this was real life. She considered pinching herself, but Bucky shifted under her grasp, and she remembered that she literally had the best tasting blood she'd ever had being freely offered to her, and she probably should be taking advantage of the opportunity.

She started feeding. She meant to go slow to savor the taste, but he was too intoxicating and she went faster than she'd meant to. His reactions weren't helping either as he moaned again and bucked into her.

All too soon, she'd drained as much as she could without making him feel sick, and she had to release him. As was, he still looked dazed when she was done, face slightly paler than normal.

"Fuck," she said. "Hold on, you need to lay down for a second. I took more than I meant to."

He allowed her to lead him towards the couch. She gently pushed him down, careful of the extreme strength boost his blood had given her. His eyes were half-lidded as he looked up at her. His lust seemed to have given into slight exhaustion.

"You need to rest. I'm going to find you some food," she told him.

He smiled up at her, looking almost high off the blood loss, before tracing his metal fingers under her blood-red eyes. His grip tightened and he tugged her down to lay on top of him, wrapping his arms securely around her.

"Stay," he said, snuggling closer to her, burying his face in her hair. "We'll finish where we left off tomorrow. Then we can discuss what it'll mean if I become your blood thrall."

Well, how could a girl possibly say no to that? She curled closer to him, licking his bite mark clean for him, allowing her saliva to heal the wound. She nuzzled her face into his neck, close enough that her lips were brushing against his throat. She couldn't smell anything but him.

She smiled in contentment even as he drifted off.

 _My thrall,_ she thought, a pleased smile curling her lips.


End file.
